


Someday

by The_Lake_King



Series: 2021 Valentine's Prompts [12]
Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Ambiguity, Angst, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Self-Hatred, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:08:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29369760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Lake_King/pseuds/The_Lake_King
Summary: Prompt 12. "Stay."Jimmy needs Thomas. But he can't stay.
Relationships: Thomas Barrow/Jimmy Kent
Series: 2021 Valentine's Prompts [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2137182
Comments: 8
Kudos: 33
Collections: Well I love you: Valentines for Thomas Barrow





	Someday

They don’t speak about it. It’s better that way. Sometimes Jimmy feels like he’s balancing a tray of glasses filled to the brim, and no matter what he does, someone keeps stacking them higher. Sooner or later he’ll sneeze or bump his elbow. Sooner or later, everything will spill. But not today. He isn’t ready.

It was easy, too easy, to walk into Thomas’ room in his pyjamas with the top undone. Easy to place a single finger over questioning lips and take and take and take. Easy to ignore darting eyes across the breakfast table. It was good and sweet and scratched itches that Jimmy never knew he had. And it was easy, when they were in the throws of it, sweaty and sated and touching from head to toe in their isolated little world behind closed doors. Thomas’ room existed outside of reality in those moments. Like Wonderland or Oz, it was not real. It couldn’t be real. For in reality there was only pain for men like Thomas. For men like _them._

Thomas didn’t question it. Jimmy had known from the moment he made that snap decision in the middle of a January night that Thomas wouldn’t question it. It was not in the man’s nature. No matter what else he was, he was a romantic first. What Jimmy gave him, he would take, however much or little. Jimmy wondered if Thomas knew how much that knowledge made him ache. That was love. Love confessed everyday in actions, if not in words. Even if Jimmy could give voice to the beast inside his chest, he could only offer a pale imitation of Thomas’ devotion. An echo of music, clanging back in dissonance. It wasn’t good enough. He wasn’t good enough. He was a coward. So they didn’t talk about it.

It’s been a month. A month of stolen nights, of wordless passion and of pretending normalcy. Thirty-one days of separating the parts of his life. Thomas didn’t send him a valentine. He tells himself he’s relieved. The beast is disappointed. Or it was, until it was given its due in the secret arms of midnight, over and over until neither man had anything left to give.

Jimmy crawls out from the blankets and pulls on his nightclothes. It’s been a month of doing what Thomas has done all his adult life. Although, truth be told, Jimmy has been keeping a part of himself secret much longer than that. It’s just one more night. One more glass on a tray that’s starting to rattle.

“Stay.” Thomas reaches out, the covers bunched around his waist. His hand hangs in the air in question. Warmth and love and strong arms to hold Jimmy for as long as he lives wait for him there. So do shame and disapproval, prison walls and Hell. No church wedding, no uncomplicated home, no newborn son in his arms. Not for them. Only kisses exchanged in the dark and the silence.

Sometimes Jimmy wants to shout at him, to beat him. To scream at this man that he ruined him. That he could have gone all his life and never known about this thing that waited inside. About this missing piece that Thomas Barrow held. He could have been normal. He could have had a wife and children and a free future. But not now.

“I can’t,” he says.

Thomas tucks his hand back under the blanket. He nods, defeated. Jimmy knows the heartbreak in his eyes. It’s there every night, every time he leaves. Every time they don’t talk about it.

Someday, he’ll stay the night. Someday he will find the strength to swallow his pride and spit out all the raging quiet within. He promises inside his head every night, as he closes the door: _Someday, I will give you what you want._ But not today. He isn’t ready. 

_But someday, Thomas. Someday._


End file.
